Site icon Blantyre Project – Official History Archives, Lanarkshire

Munro Butchers, Blantyre

Digital Reporter

 

Munro Butchers – was a former butchers chain owned shop at Clydeview Shopping Centre in the 1980’s, which is now occupied by Marie Curie.

In August 1995, Property group Asda Property Holdings linked up with Dewhurst managing directors Roger Reeson and Eugene Lines. Asda Property purchased the freehold premises occupied by Dewhurst, the largest chain of its type in Britain, and leased them back to the new MBO company, Dewhurst Butchers, which by then had bought over the Alex Munro chain of butchers. (In Scotland Dewhurst traded as Alex Munro).

However, Munro Butchers in Blantyre was solely a 1980’s business and closed down in the late 1980’s rumoured to have been due to competition from Asda. There were also shops in Rutherglen, Motherwell, Cambuslang and Hamilton at the time.

Jimmy Scott worked in the popular shop and former employees remember the multitude of different characters coming in for their meat.

From “Blantyre Explained” by Paul Veverka (c) 2017

On social media:

Bryan Deazeley Munro’s the Master Butcher. I remember it being next to Greggs and being a busy shop in its day. People used to say the meat in there was way better than ASDA’s. When you consider the small businesses that used to inhabit the Clydeview Shopping Centre it’s a sad sight now 🙁
The Blantyre Project Eric Flack told me, “Alex Munro butchers was purposely “designed” to be a marketed as a small family style butchers shop in Scotland., It was part of the largest privately owned company in Britain. The Vestey Group. Its shares traded as Union International. They owned large tracts of land in Argentina where the cattle for the shops were mainly kept. The Blue Funnel shipping line of fast refrigerated ships transported the beef etc to the UK was part of the group. They had large cold stores all round Great Britain a small “part” of which you could “hire” to keep your own frozen produce in. ie Referigated Buildings. One I recall in Glasgow was a converted church in George Street almost opposite Strathclyde Uni in the 1950s. I butcher relation kept a small “hired” area where he stored carcasses before butchering. I recall going on Sundays to the cold store to help “prepare” ie cut up meat for Monday in his butchers shop in Duke Street Glasgow. Traded as Dewhurst in England. Donald Cooks canned goods were part of the group and sold in their butchers shops. It was a complete integrated meat business.”
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